We have way too much info spread around the forums regarding the artistic side, for that reason ill focus all the most useful resources in this topic.

If you are an artist and want to help the project you are welcome to try to create or complete any of the ones below. To avoid two or more persons working on the same, please post what you are working on and ill close that task to everyone else; if after some time we dont see any advance on it we will free the task again. Ill also try to keep the topic clean, so ill clean non important posts from time to time, the important bits will be resumed together.

All models we will use must be 3D (being the sweetspot from 1k to 3k polis for characters), textured and animated; but if you are not proficient at any of the steps you can still commit your work for someone else to finish. We accept all free, Creative Commons and GPL licenses , but not strictly commercial ones; we also encourage everyone to post their work as well in: http://opengameart.org/ to help further the open source comunity.

The best texture format would be PNG, since it does not lost quality unlike jpg; and its size can be from 512x512 (simple models) 1024x1024 (standart size) or 2048x2048 (for models that require lots of detail).

The models need to at least have these animations to be useful:Walk; Attack; idle; death; sleep (some sleep on a bed, others over the floor or even thrones, you can suggest a bed for that specific creature and need to take into account the extra elevation needed for sleep animation on a bed)

- Additional animations needed but not critical:More attack and death animations; being hurt; cheering or happy body expression; dancing.

Important: for weapon wieldings creatures extra bones are needed:

Creatures with hands that should be able to hold a weapon should have two bones at their hands that have to be named Weapon_L and Weapon_R. The z-axis should point back, if the weapon is held vertically (check out a model in the repository).

This way they can equip different weapons in the game and even upgrade to better ones.

Concepts: Made specially for us or using any of our acepted licenses. They must be created from scratch.

Is there already agreed upon design for some of these characters or should artist "wing it"? if no, is there something the project's programmers/designers think artist should be aware of (eg: try not to make creatures too projectile heavy, X creature shouldn't fly,ect?).

Danimal will be the one officially deciding but:- Maybe the eating animation will be necessary (or maybe we can fall back on using the attack ones?)- A flee animation?- Do you think we could use an extra (and why not funny) idle animation, for instance?

Eating:Considering that your minions are going to be doing this quite alot( like walking/running,sleeping,attacking) it's definitely a huge "it would be very, very nice" kind of animation in my mind. but if the contributor lacks the time or isn't conformable with it ( ect). falling back to attack animation is probably the only option until it could be added in.

Fleeing:For the Fleeing, a running animation could probably do just fine( maybe a little faster with some whimpering/screaming sounds accompanying it?) or a slightly faster walking if it's the only option. but seeing a kobold flee like the dwarf in Dungeon Keeper 2's intro would be a sight to see.

Extra:Goes without saying, but the more animations we can get the better and I think if the artist really wants to add them in, more power to them. it would add a little flare and character to the creatures. but there's also animations like torturing,reading/researching,ect that may need to be considered and when you add them up they make up a substantial amount of work for any artist.

I won't mind adding these into my contributions if there's overwhelming support for them and time permits. but, a baseline requirement wouldn't go amiss.

Hi guys, my thougths:- Eating, let it be an attack or else we have to add the chicken model at every single creature model to show this. Lets just have the creature attack the chicken, and it dissapears in a cloud of feathers with a scream (maybe done with particles?).- Fleeing: this one would be cool, the creature freaking out and getting a small speed increase- Charging into combat walking with weapons raised

Extra ones: cheering or happy body expression; dancing.torturing: lets use closed torture devices so we dont need to animate anything but the devicesreading/researching: a leaning forward animation, should be easy

Actually, there are so many we cant really force anyone to add all of them, a master skeleton for humans would help a lot, also monster animation need to be handcrafted for each one which means more work than humans.

Is there already agreed upon design for some of these characters or should artist "wing it"? if no, is there something the project's programmers/designers think artist should be aware of (eg: try not to make creatures too projectile heavy, X creature shouldn't fly,ect?).

Well, i do think most of them are pretty clear on how they are and their abilities (zombie is never gonna fly) but its not like we only want that ones, if someone comes with a good model we will adopt it rigth away and choose a fitting role and skills. What do you mean with projectile heavy?

Danimal {l Wrote}:Hi guys, my thougths:- Eating, let it be an attack or else we have to add the chicken model at every single creature model to show this. Lets just have the creature attack the chicken, and it dissapears in a cloud of feathers with a scream (maybe done with particles?).

not quite true. not trying to push it off to the programming side of the project, but ogre3d has an attachObjectToBone() function built right into Ogre::Entity. the chickens can be attached programmatically to the models "Hand" bone and "deleted" when "eaten". would this would be worth the cost to performance or not is little beyond my knowledge of the subject.

Danimal {l Wrote}:- Fleeing: this one would be cool, the creature freaking out and getting a small speed increase- Charging into combat walking with weapons raised

it should be pretty easy to modify a running animation to get these. agreed

Danimal {l Wrote}:Extra ones: cheering or happy body expression; dancing.torturing: lets use closed torture devices so we dont need to animate anything but the devicesreading/researching: a leaning forward animation, should be easy

Actually, there are so many we cant really force anyone to add all of them, a master skeleton for humans would help a lot, also monster animation need to be handcrafted for each one which means more work than humans.

it would save alot work, especially if the majority of the creatures are simliar in nature. in theory it should be pretty easy to accomplish and just like you suggested with the beetle golem, have few different rig setups. I'm willing to give this a try after all the details have been hammered out .

edit:Clarifying "projectile heavy"For example, looking at the "elemental-golem", maybe instead of making him just punch or kick, the animator decides they could give him an ice attack spell animation or something. would there be any design or engine reason not to do so?

Ahhh, ok, i think only the stone golem would need a throw giant stone kind of animation, and the shoot proyectile would go to archers and mages. Beast creatures can just start a proyectile with a normal attack (spit?) but to be really correct that would need a per creature studio. Like dragon spitting fire or the "Swampler" spitting a ball of poison.

See how the animation list increases? we need to be careful or noneone will ever animate for us

but ogre3d has an attachObjectToBone() function built right into Ogre::Entity.

not quite true. not trying to push it off to the programming side of the project, but ogre3d has an attachObjectToBone() function built right into Ogre::Entity. the chickens can be attached programmatically to the models "Hand" bone and "deleted" when "eaten". would this would be worth the cost to performance or not is little beyond my knowledge of the subject.

What is said here is true and shouldn't be that difficult but I can't tell the problems we might have while coding this or when someone will do it.To be able to actually test this, we will have to code:- The hunger core system- The hatchery room base code (I'll do it) + chicken spawning and containment system.- The new creature action and handling when he's hungry to go and fetch a chicken from one same team's hatchery.and then: - Make the creature kill a chicken by swallowing it.

Danimal {l Wrote}:Ahhh, ok, i think only the stone golem would need a throw giant stone kind of animation, and the shoot proyectile would go to archers and mages. Beast creatures can just start a proyectile with a normal attack (spit?) but to be really correct that would need a per creature studio. Like dragon spitting fire or the "Swampler" spitting a ball of poison.

a normal biting animation could double as a spiting animation fair enough and I think that would be quite acceptable.

Danimal {l Wrote}:See how the animation list increases? we need to be careful or noneone will ever animate for us

Yes, it could get out of hand very fast. that was my intention for generating discussion on the topic. so artist will know what animations should be high priority or what ones should not. last thing I want to to is help set long list of arbitrary requirements for contributors to meet, turning something that's suppose to be fun into work

Bertram {l Wrote}:Hi guys,

What is said here is true and shouldn't be that difficult but I can't tell the problems we might have while coding this or when someone will do it.To be able to actually test this, we will have to code:- The hunger core system- The hatchery room base code (I'll do it) + chicken spawning and containment system.- The new creature action and handling when he's hungry to go and fetch a chicken from one same team's hatchery.and then: - Make the creature kill a chicken by swallowing it.

Feasible but not there yet, so it might not be a priority atm.

Regards,

Agreed, probably best just to stick with attack animations for eating until this can be tested. thanks for your input Bertram.

Ok, hopefully my questions helped clear up a few things and weren't completely badgering. I'm looking through a few of the models now and I'm especially eying the ancient beast ones. I like the ideal of killing two birds one stone and they're over all great creatures.